CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background
The rapid growth of science and technology nowadays is insisting
people to improve both skills and knowledge in order to be able to move
forward facing the world. Science and Technology play some important
roles in all level of community. In other words science and technology is a
key to face the global era. Therefore, educators need to prepare students by
modifying some teaching strategy in order to enhance students in skills,
knowledge, the way students’ think, and attitude.
Factually most of teachers still use traditional method which is no
longer appropriate with the condition nowadays. The old fashion teaching
method is not eligible to be applied since this method force the students to
memorize the concept by telling them the whole information about the
concept, without giving them an opportunity to explore their skills, to have
their own ideas, and construct the concept by their own way. This situation
will lead the students to have less interest in learning science which can
bring them to have low understanding in science (Boumová, 2008).
Cooperative learning is one of the learning approach that is should
be implemented for students in secondary level (Cracolice et al., 2001).
This type of learning is able to build students to be active in teaching
learning process by giving them opportunity to explore themselves in how
the way they thinking, how they communicate with others and how they
involve in class. Teacher should guide students to explore themselves in
finding the concept by their own in order to avoid passive learning yet
provide long term memory effect for students while learning the concept.
Furthermore other advantage in using discussion in group is enable
students to develop their social relation. There are some values which can
provides students in developing their social relation, some values that can
be enhance, learning in group train students to be more open minded in
facing various opinion from others, it also helps students to interact and
communicate each other, furthermore it helps students to pick out some
social values that can be a fundamental aspect from the group that
students’ have (Ali and Asrori, 2011). Meanwhile, based on Bramaje and
Espinosa (2013) one factor which influenced students’ cognitive is that
grouping students, small group is utilized to enhance students in
discussion session by interact each other without hesitation. In other
words, students with small group discussion experienced less hesitation to
ask the concept thus, the discussion will lead students to have better
understanding about the concept.
One of the cooperative learning is peer-led team learning, which
developed by chemistry educators in 1990s which can be said as a better
method that is able to challenge students to take responsibility for their
own learning, while at the same time it is able to give them necessary
guidance more than traditional learning.
Based on Horwitz and Rodger (2009) Peer-led team learning
provides some advantages: improved leadership skills, opportunity to try
out leadership, increase confidence of students, enhance in conceptual
understanding and strengthen friendship among students, including other
peer-leader. Other study also found that Peer-led team learning also
provides learning situation where students can enhance both conceptual
understanding reasoning abilities. Peer-led team learning exposed students
in different areas such as exposure in teaching different strategy of
teaching, confront new colleagues, build self confidence, exchange ideas
with group, and develop different skill (Bramaje and Espinosa, 2013).
Besides, the skills that can be developed by using Peer Led Team Learning
are also stated in Indonesian National Curriculum, which is curriculum
2013 that stated on basic competence 2.1 Respect individual works in
Thus, the statement is correlate with the implementation of peer led
those learning method can increase conceptual understanding and skills of
students. According to Bloom taxonomy on Krathwohl (2002) the
conceptual understanding can be measured in how students understand the
concept, retrieving the relevant knowledge from long term memory,
implementing the concept, analyzing how one part connect each other,
critiquing on something based on several criteria, and producing an
original product.
Author would like to enhance the conceptual understanding of
students, and quality of teaching learning process by implementing
peer-led team learning that elaborate with project making. By making the
One of the skill that can be improve by using peer led team learning
is leadership skills (Howirtz and Rodger, 2009) since the workshop of peer
led team learning will run by a trained peer leader. Nowadays, people need
the increasing number of effective leader in the future (Ogurlu and Emir,
2013) which means that teacher should not emphasis the students only in
cognitive aspects but also in skills and personality since those aspects will
be used in order to prepare them in the future to face the society. In fact,
researcher did the research have ability to be a good leader by showing
some indicators of leadership skills such as some students can show their
responsibility to their work, and able to communicate and share their ideas
to others.
Based on Winston and Patterson (2006) a leader is one people or
more who has abilities, skills, and gifts to influence or trains the follower.
Hence, a leader is the one who can bring the team to the success by giving
a good influenced to the team. Meanwhile, Alalfy, Al-Aodah, Shalaby
(2013) define some aspects that should be examine the leadership skills in
academic purposes which stated that leadership skills in educational
setting is able to examine some aspects from the leader, there are four
distinct categories such as cognitive, interpersonal, business and strategic
skills.
understand the concept since the team will full guided by the team leader.
Those statement means that a leader that leads the team not only has
good strategy in guiding the team, but also team leader should have high
intellectual skills and good personality in order to be capable in guiding
the team in a proper way.
The demands of the effective leaders are increasing day by day, so
that teacher should provide opportunity for students to develop leadership
skills for students, in order to fulfill future demand. Through peer-led team
learning, teacher can provide opportunity for students to explore their
leadership skills.
Refer to the curriculum 2013, Global warming is one of the concept
that should be learn by students, based on core competence 3 Understand,
meta cognitive based on his curiosity about science, technology, arts,
culture, and humanities with an insight into humanity, national, state, and
civilization-related causes of phenomena and events, applying procedural
knowledge in a specific field of study according to their talents and
interests to solve the problem and core competence 4 Processing,
reasoning, and provide in the real of the concrete and abstract domains
associated with the development of the learned at school independently,
act effectively and creatively, and be able to use the method according to
the rules of science. Hence, the concept is quite challenging for students to
be used in implementing peer-led team learning. Since students demanded
to have better reasoning skills in core competence 4 in curriculum 2013
and implemented what they have learnt to the real condition which is
suitable with this result that will implemented project based learning
combined with peer led team learning, since this concept will rise several
problems that should be solved by the students through peer-led team
learning workshop by guidance of peer leader and teacher.
Peer leader should facilitate and draw the opinions and beliefs of
the followers so that followers can move from ambiguity to the clarity of
understanding (Winston and Patterson, 2006). So that peer leader should
act as a bridge for group member to help them gain the concept in easier
way by guiding them in discussion session, the key of the success in the
team is that how is the roles of peer leader during project making and how
the presence of peer leader influenced cognitive understanding of the team.
According to the result of the study about the implementation of
peer-led team learning and leadership skills above, the author would like
to analyze the effect of peer-led team learning implementation in students’
conceptual understanding and the roles of peer leader in each team during
the learning by observing the leadership skills aspects that can be done by
B. Research Problem
Based on the background above, the problem that arises in this
research is stated in the question as follow: “How is The Impact of Peer
-Led Team Learning Towards Students’ Conceptual Understanding and
Leadership Skills in Global warming?”
C. Research Questions
There are several research questions guiding the study noted as
follows:
1. How is the impact of Peer-Led Team Learning method towards
students’ conceptual understanding in learning global warming
concept?
2. How is the roles of all peer leader during the implementation of
Peer Led Team Learning?
3. How is the students’ impression in learning global warming towards
Peer Led Team Learning?
D. Limitation of Problems
In order to make the research become more focused, the problem is
limited as follow:
1. Peer-Led Team Learning is one of learning method which
involves students discussing in small groups, the groups meetings
are designed and run by undergraduate students leaders, who are
trained to facilitate groups learning (Horwitz and Rodger, 2009).
Researcher would like to conduct the research by peer-leader
students from the same class with member of the groups, and the
workshop will be a group project which is in line with global
warming concept.
2. Students’ Conceptual understanding that is measured in this
of C1 (remember), C2 (understand), C3 (apply), C4 (analysis), and
C5 (evaluate) based on Krathwohl (2002).
3. Students’ Leadership skills are the skills that should have by the
leader to influence the follower (Winston and Patterson, 2006).
This leadership skill is an essential ability to solve the conflict in
group, risk taker, the ability of communicate with other (Spears,
2010). Skills that measured in this research based on Landau and
Weissler (1991) are: responsibility, the urge of domination,
consistency, physical energy, success oriented, articulate and
persuasiveness, planning skills, determination and courage,
self-confidence, empathy with the group, and emotional balance and
control.
4. In this research, Global Warming concept as stated in curriculum
2013 for 7th grade, based on Core Competence number 2, and Basic
Competence number 1, 2, 3 and 4
E. Research Objectives
These research objectives specified as follow:
1. To analyze the impact of peer-led team learning towards students’
conceptual understanding in learning global warming
2. To analyze the roles of each team leader in the team in learning
global warming through peer-led team learning
3. To identify the students’ impression in learning global warming
F. Research Benefit
The results of this study are expected to provide the following
benefits:
1. For teacher:
a) Provide the information about the influence of one of
cooperative learning method which is peer-led team learning
method towards students’ conceptual understanding
b) Teacher can enhance the method in teaching science in order to
improve the teaching learning process especially in global
warming concept both by implementing peer led team learning
and project making
c) Teacher can improve both cognitive and skills of students
through peer-led team learning method especially leadership
skills of students, by assessing several leadership skills
indicators and aspects from the team leader during project
making.
d) Provide the data about how students’ impress this learning
through questionnaire. This would provide the information the
strength and weakness of peer led team learning.
e) As a reference for teacher about the method of teaching science
in order to enrich teacher’s ability in teaching science concept
2. For Students:
a) Students have more opportunity to enhance their leadership
skills by leading a group discussion and act as facilitator to the
group in order to enhance cognitive of the team through
peer-led team learning method
b) By using peer-led team learning method, hopefully students can
enhance the quality of teaching learning process by actively
involved in group discussion and brave to share their ideas
c) Students will be able to learn how they interact each other
discussion session and able to increase their critical thinking
while defending their opinion in discussion session
d) Through peer-led team learning method, students can improve
both cognitive and skills in joyful way. Students can explore
themselves in discussion session by sharing the ideas with the
guidance of the peer leader.
3. For other researcher:
a) As a reference for other researcher, how to conduct one of the
cooperative learning called as Peer-Led Team Learning
b) Hopefully this research can contribute in other research as
important data about the impact of Peer-Led Team Learning
towards students’ conceptual understanding and leadership
skills.
G. Organization Structure of Research Paper
In order to get the research paper systematically ranged, this
research paper arranged based on the following organization structure as
follow:
1. Chapter I: Introduction
This chapter explained the background of this research, the aimed
of research why does the researcher conduct this research,
continued with the benefit of the research in the same field of the
research.
2. Chapter II: Literature Review
This chapter explains some literature review and theories which
support the research. The explanation of this chapter include in
Peer Led Team Learning, Conceptual Understanding and
Cognitive, Leadership Skills and Global Warming.
This chapter explains the research method, research procedures, the
instruments that used how to process the data, and research plot.
4. Chapter IV: Result and Discussion
In this chapter, the research result are shown and followed by the
discussion. It analyses the result and connect the result appropriate
with some theories
5. Chapter V: Conclusion and Recommendation
Chapter V in this chapter is the last chapter that explained the
conclusion based on the data and its analyses that has been
processed in chapter IV. The suggestion is a necessary to minimize
